Queensland must leave coal in the ground to honour Paris climate ambition

By Kirsten Macey

UpdatedDecember 14, 2015 — 6.23pmfirst published at 6.16pm

In 2009 ahead of the Copenhagen Climate change conference, I flew to the small Caribbean island of Grenada for a meeting of the Alliance of Small Island States or AOSIS a key group in the United Nations climate negotiations.

We went on a bus trip around the island and saw the stark bare trees where Grenada's principal agricultural export, nutmeg, once grew. They had been stripped bare five years before when Hurricane Ivan brought devastating 200km hour winds.

The slogan "1.5 DEGREES" is projected on the Eiffel Tower as part of the COP21, United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris.Credit:AP

The spice trade that had brought the world's trading ships to this tiny Carribean island for centuries had been wiped out in one devastating storm.

Hurricanes are typical further north, but historically Grenada has never been in the hurricane line until recently.

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The AOSIS countries agreed to a goal to keep global temperatures from rising by less than 1.5 degrees.

Anything else meant literally sinking for some of these tiny island countries, where the water was already lapping at their buildings and roads.

The reason why the then Prime Minister of Grenada Thomas Tillman was talking up the 1.5 degrees target was clear. Hurricane Ivan had cost Grenada more than US$900 million, more than twice the country's GDP. The mantra of the small island states is unequivocal – "1.5 degrees to survive".

But the pressure AOSIS faced at Copenhagen was overwhelming. The Tuvaluan delegation revealed that the Australian government had threated to withhold aid funding if the pacific island nations didn't drop their demands for a 1.5 degrees goal to be included in the Copenhagen accord.

AOSIS was not alone. The Least Developed Countries, a group of 48 mostly African countries, were also worried about the impacts of global warming. By the end of the Copenhagen meeting more than 100 countries were calling for global temperature rise to stay well below 1.5 degrees.

Sitting in the negotiations for five years as a delegate for AOSIS, it is hard to reconcile the science with the seemingly tit-for-tat squabbling that goes on over the thousands of pages of phrases, sentences in brackets and words. I sat next to these determined men and women as they spent sleepless nights behind closed doors negotiating for their very future.

But in 2015 a different story has emerged. 1.5 degrees is the new buzzword. The numbers 1.5 degrees were even emblazoned in lights on the Eiffel Tower.

For the first time there is a global agreement to contain global temperature rises to "well below 2 degrees" above preindustrial levels and to work towards the 1.5 degrees goal.

The science is clear. We know that 1.5 degrees is still possible but we are running out of time and the action does not yet meet the level of ambition.

The Climate Action tracker shows that the individual targets proposed by each country and agreed to in Paris are woefully inadequate and the world is still at risk of 2.7 degrees global temperature rise. The action does not yet match the ambition. But in the Paris agreement, countries have agreed to revisit their targets every five years. Australia's target is 26-28 percent cuts by 2030 over 2005 levels. This is not enough even to meet 2 degrees.

Scientists have said just to meet the 2 degrees target Australia would have to leave 90 percent of our coal reserves in the ground. For Queensland the hard reality means no new coal mines.

If Queensland wants to save the Great Barrier Reef and its billion dollar tourism industry, the massive Carmichael mine in the Galilee Basin simply cannot go ahead. If the projected coal from the Carmichael mine were burnt it would amount to the total emissions from Germany.

We have a huge responsibility in Queensland to keep coal in the ground if we are going to avoid global warming and all its consequences – coral bleaching of our iconic Great Barrier Reef, hotter weather, increased floods and more intense storms and cyclones.

Many commentators including Al Gore suggest the Paris agreement represents the end of the fossil fuel industry. It does if the 1.5 degrees limit is taken seriously, it cannot be achieved by burning fossil fuels at the current rate and so in effect it marks the beginning of the end of the fossil fuel industry.

But Paris also missed the chance to make this explicit. Unfortunately the request from the President of Kiribati for a moratorium on new coal mines was not part of the agreement. Nowhere in the text does it mention a rapid transition away from fossil fuels to a cleaner renewable energy source. It is implied.

Queensland remains Australia's largest exporter of coal, and both the state and federal governments are in no hurry to divest from fossil fuels, approving new coal mines and coal mine expansions across Queensland.

This has to stop. Coal has to stay in the ground if we are to have any hope of achieving 1.5 degrees.

As Tuvalu said in the closing statement after agreement was reached in Paris – "this agreement will save our lives."

But it means turning the words from the Paris Agreement into action and this has to happen quickly.

Anything less is consigning small islands to certain devastation and Queensland's natural wonders to ruins.

Kirsten Macey formerly worked for Climate Analytics, supporting small island states and least developed countries at the UNFCCC negotiations. She is now the climate campaigner at the Queensland Conservation Council working to keep coal in the ground.